By DiscoMonster

Mealtimes:

“Suppertime. I should set the table. 'Cause it's suppertime. Somehow I'm not able. 'Cause that man o'mine. Ain't comin' home no more.” How could I tell the neighbours? What would my family say?

She had a voice so rich she never had to pay for breakfast, lunch, dinner or tea.

She beguiled my man. He wouldn’t come home for supper. He wouldn’t come home at all until I made promises I couldn’t keep.

For breakfast, I sucked lemons.

I felt humiliated. I wished revenge on my man. I made plans to leave him. I imagined him all alone eating dinner for one trying to understand the vagaries of love.

I cooked up a plan. A natty supper to fill his gut and make him rest. Make him think I was supine.

I was sweetness and light on the outside but bitter and sour on the inside. I left him belly full. I met friends. We had a liquid lunch. Would my man swallow my excuses like he swallowed my food? I went partying.

I saw a tasty looking lad in a club. We flirted. I didn’t mind being called breakfast if I was his flavour. But then he called my friends his lunch, dinner and supper. He was negging me. I wonder if he realises why dishes go cold on him?

Then I saw an old flame and hungry for that old salt we went for a midnight feast. Sated! I knew only he could satisfy my hunger, quench my thirst. I asked him to come away with me.

I went home for the last time and made an ital breakfast. Vital it was, restoring my strength for the argument to come.

A weekend of both the indigestible and lip-smacking deliciousness gave way to workday routines. Biscuits for breakfast, FML.

FML and its uncertainty. I’m free of that man but my lover never stays beyond breakfast. How can I live a life when solitude rips the rhythm of mealtimes from my life? I want to become a chef,

I wonder what my ex is doing? Wonder if that man is still on the hooch? Probably having breakfast while listening to Johnny Dowd.

Meals:

I used to get up when I wanted, have tea with cinnamon. Drink champagne, go back to bed. I wasted myself living an unreal life.

I had been a top chef. You name it I cooked it. I was good. But I have a big mouth, the wrong genitals and the wrong skin colour. I never knew my supposed station. I made a good platter. But my patter – it got me sacked.

I ended up penniless. I’d walk past people arguing about whether to eat ham ’n’ eggs while my stomach rumbled and my mind growled with indignation. I gave them a piece of my mind when I really wanted a piece of their chicken.

One Saturday there was a fish fry party smelling so good, but the public turned their back on me.

Families at a hot barbecue wouldn’t share a sausage with me. I sullied the atmosphere.

I felt ashamed. I was malnourished in every way. So, I went back home and my mother broke bread for me.

She insisted on taking me to the Passover Feast. The good people there relaxed me with their herbs.

They took me on a stoned soul picnic. I began to feel part of a community again. Felt that food was for sharing and not an extension of my ego – realised that being with family at mealtimes was infinitely more important than the shade of the sauce complementing the asparagus.

I saw a wedding feast. A huge family gathering, the food making the conversation easy and the atmosphere relaxed. Such togetherness. Yeah! Meals bring people together. It seems so obvious but I’d forgotten that.

Nowadays I don’t get up before 12 and have tea with cinnamon and a champagne lunch, instead I have a sound breakfast. You can’t underestimate the value of three square meals a day.

Tomorrow I’m going to take some school girls on a picnic. It’ll be an adventure that’ll bring us together.

Jon Spencer’s explosive solo to Marianne Faithfull’s gentle honesty, Bill Ryder-Jones love songs to music by the film director David Lynch, this week’s album roundup embraces a wealth of experimentation and styles

Word of the week: It's the infinitesimally small subatomic particle which forms matter, a type of curdled cheese from soured milk, is used in computer language and in sci-fi fiction names, but where in lyrics?

Word of the week: With an appropriately flamboyant sound and rhythm it’s a word best known for the title of Freddie Mercury’s epic Bohemian Queen song, and several major classical works, but where is it used in song lyrics?

Word of the week: It’s an adjective with a beautiful sound. It means the characteristics of our ape cousins, but of course sharing almost all the same DNA, it also means us. But where is simian in lyrics?

Word of the Week: It sizzles off the tongue, it’s the name of a great inventor, and after him, a unit of magnetic flux density, and it’s also a car, and in slang recreational drug, but where does it appear in song lyrics?

Word of the Week: It’s a word with a beautiful sound formed from the Latin word, umbra, for shade, is not merely an expanding accessory to shelter from the rain, also a general term of protection or a thing made of many parts

Word of the Week: It’s a famous Bjork album, but where does it come up in lyrics? The root of this word relates to the evening and its tolling bell, but also bats, Venus, a cocktail, and in slang – a kind, smart, cool girl

Word of the Week: It’s a slim, fast dog, the name of a car, a ship, a tank and a light aircraft, and also slang for recreational use of nitrous oxide from small metal containers, but where does it appear in song?

Word of the week: It’s an idealised location of magnificence and beauty with Chinese origins described in Coleridge’s poem, and a 1980 film starring Olivia Newton-John and song performed with ELO, but where else does it appear in lyrics?

Word of the week: Following on from zephyr last week, we work backwards to a colour term that can pertain to cheap books, a fish, a mussel, insect, a certificate for gold, and in urban slang, council workers wearing hi-vis jackets

Word of the week: Launching a new Song Bar series highlighting words or phrases used in lyrics for the oddness or musicality, let’s start with a z-word, and several examples including Madonna, Bill Callaghan, Frank Sinatra and Ian Dury

Song of the Day: Continuing a week of WW1 anniversary songs, in an unusually tender song from the heavy rock band, it’s a tragic first-person narration of the Battle of the Somme where 19,000 British soldiers were killed before noon

Song of the Day: Next in a week of songs dedicated to the First World War Armistice centenary, a deeply sad and vivid song by Ray Davies about the fleeting life of a young soldier killed in 1916 from the 1969 album, Arthur

Song of the Day: Continuing on the First World War Armistice Day centenary, a trio of some of the finest songs about war from the British singer and composer from her acclaimed 2011 album Let England Shake

Song of the Day: Today’s date, 7 November, is significant in all sorts of ways - elections, revolutions, births, deaths, but it’s the day in 1908 when two of America’s most famous outlaws were reportedly killed on the run in Bolivia

Song of the Day: In the wake of the most vital mid-term US elections in a generation, the 1972 rock song that is often wheeled out on these occasions, but less known is that it is a reworking of an earlier song, Reflected